Hi Team –

 

The summer of 2023 continues to give us a lot to cheer about! This week, the Reds hit the All-Star Break – the traditional halfway point of the baseball season – in first place for their division! And just as the Reds look to carry their winning momentum into the second half of the season, here at TriHealth, we are doing the same as we hit the ground running to start our new Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24). And thanks to you, our more than 13,000 extraordinary team members and physicians, we’re headed into FY24 with growing momentum and better positioned than ever to continue to lead the way in Getting Healthcare Right!!

 

But before we dive headfirst into the FY24 work ahead, I’d like to take a moment to review and celebrate the impressive progress we have made together in Getting Healthcare Right by delivering on the Triple Aim + One – better care, better health, and better value for every patient we serve and a better work and practice environment for every team member and physician who serves!

 

Eight years ago, TriHealth faced a critical choice as we were setting the course for our system’s future. We could either double down on a broken U.S. healthcare system – a system financed through fee-for-service payment models which unintentionally incentivized “volume” over “value” and helped to create the most expensive and “uneven” healthcare systems in the world. Or, we could go to work to lead the way in fixing our nation’s broken healthcare system.

 

Guided by our 170-year mission of service to our community, our decision and the path forward were clear. So, we went to work on building a great culture to support our people in doing their best and being their best for those we serve, while adopting innovative new care and financing models aimed at improving health, expanding access to high-quality care, and lowering cost.

 

Getting Healthcare Right starts with delivering the right care in the right way in the right place to produce the right clinical outcomes at the right cost. And today, the “right place” is increasingly in the outpatient environment, which ranges from one of our physician practices to any of our 13 major ambulatory campuses. The “right place” can also be in the patient’s home where our care management teams assist patients in better managing their chronic conditions, which actually prevents acute episodes of disease or rising risk that often put patients in a hospital. In other words, we recognized that to get healthcare “right,” we needed to focus more on ways to keep patients healthy through prevention, early detection and intervention, and better management of chronic diseases, instead of simply treating them when they become sick and require care in one of our hospitals.

 

In order to do this, we have adopted value-based payment arrangements which reward TriHealth for improving health and reducing cost, and building the population health infrastructure and competencies – such as advanced analytics, ambulatory care management and practice redesign – to deliver the “right care in the right place.”

 

Now, eight years into our journey, we ARE Getting Healthcare Right – and what we have accomplished together is nothing short of remarkable!! We have invested in population health care and financing models; we’ve grown and strengthened our world-class physician community; we’ve built a high-value network of hospitals, ambulatory campuses, and service lines; and we’ve developed our TriHealth team and culture through the TriHealth Way. And the result is that TriHealth patients are healthier and care is more accessible and affordable. And the following are just a few highlights of the impact we’ve had on our patients, our team, and our community...

 

Through our foundational work to adopt, embrace, and master the TriHealth Way of Leading, Serving, and Delivering Care – coupled with the investments we have made in building a world-class physician community and a high-value regional network of comprehensive care environments – we’re bringing our community greater access to the best care available anywhere. And our patients and our industry are taking notice!! Through strong and improving HCAHPS, CGCAHPS, EDCAHPS, and OASCAHPS performance, we’re seeing patient experience trend up in ALL FOUR of our care environments – inpatient hospital settings, physician practices, emergency departments, and our ambulatory procedural areas – for the first time in recent memory!! And safety events at TriHealth – including hospital-acquired infections, serious harm events, and patient falls – have declined over the past five years with serious harm events alone down by a whopping 70%! And this work will continue until we reach our ultimate goal of Zero Patient Harm!! 

 

Additionally, TriHealth is consistently ranked among the top health systems in the nation for best-in-class care. Just last week, Newsweek magazine released its 2023 honor roll for the Best Maternity Hospitals in the U.S., and both Good Samaritan and Bethesda North hospitals made this exclusive list! Good Sam was one of only 159 hospitals nationally to be awarded Newsweek’s “five ribbon” ranking, which is the highest ranking possible. And Bethesda North received a “four ribbon” ranking – placing it among the top 384 leading hospitals for maternity care in the U.S. Congratulations to all of our physicians and team members supporting maternity care at Bethesda North and Good Sam who made this achievement possible!

 

2. BETTER HEALTH – Early Detection and Prevention, and Chronic Care Management are Improving Health and Saving Lives 

Through early detection, such as cancer screenings, we are identifying illness earlier, curing it, and saving lives. Two examples of this are our breast cancer and colorectal cancer screening practices, which are a vital part of our population health care model. The proactive population health care processes we have built enable TriHealth to complete breast cancer screenings for nearly 85% of our patient population on an annual basis – far ahead of the 72% industry average – and we are just getting started. 

 

For colorectal cancer screenings, we are completing nearly 80% vs. 64% for the overall industry. So, this means, we’ve screened nearly 20,000 more women for breast cancer and nearly 38,000 more adults for colorectal cancer than the average U.S. health system in the last twelve months alone! And because we did, we estimate we have saved nearly 1,000 additional lives – simply by making the investment to hardwire scheduling and follow-up processes to screen our at-risk patient population to detect and cure cancer before it spreads!! Preventing avoidable deaths is Getting Healthcare Right at its best – and we’re not the only ones who think so! Recently, our work to proactively screen patients for breast and colorectal cancers was recognized as a national model of excellence by UnitedHealthcare (UHC) – the nation’s largest health insurance company. UHC honored TriHealth with their United in Care Service Award, presented in collaboration with the American Cancer Society. The award recognizes Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) with outstanding cancer screening rates in 2022. TriHealth’s breast and colorectal cancer screening rates were among UHC’s top 10 for Commercial ACOs in the nation!!

 

TriHealth is also leading the industry in chronic disease management. Today, the three major chronic conditions affecting the U.S. population are diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. Far surpassing industry norms, 80% of the TriHealth patients we serve with diabetes are “well managed,” compared with the industry average of just 58%. And the story is much the same for management of hypertension and coronary artery disease through effective medication adherence (see graph). 

 

And if delivering better care and better health wasn’t enough – we’re also lowering the total cost of care – one patient at a time – along the way!! Early detection, preventive care, better management of chronic conditions, and a shift in care to the least costly settings means better health and fewer avoidable hospitalizations and emergency department visits. And all this translates into more affordable and more accessible care for our patients – and the numbers speak for themselves! The total cost of care for our commercial patient population is roughly $528 per patient per month or about $6,000 per year. For our region, the industry’s average total cost of care per patient is roughly $600 per month, or $7,200 per year. So TriHealth’s total cost of care per patient is approximately 11% lower than the industry average – all because we are providing the right, and often preventive, care at the right time in the right place – all made possible through the investments we are making in our people and our population health care models!

 

And speaking of our people, foundational to our work to Get Healthcare Right is a great culture and a highly engaged team of physicians, nurses, other caregivers and support staff. We’ve worked hard to listen and respond to the needs of our physicians and team members in order to build and sustain a workplace and practice environment that support you in doing your best and being your best for those we serve and those who serve. And it’s encouraging to see that these efforts are making a difference. Team member engagement is on the rise – consistently trending far ahead of industry norms! 

 

We’re also seeing a decline in new team member turnover rates following our nation’s “great resignation,” coming out of three long years of the COVID pandemic. And we look forward to using the feedback provided in our most recent Annual Engagement Survey to make TriHealth an even better place to work and practice in the coming months!

 

Because of the decision we made eight years ago to embrace a bold, and in many ways, noble vision to Get Healthcare Right – today, we are doing just that! Our care is among the best in the nation. Our patients are healthier, their experience better, and the value and affordability we provide are far greater by every measure! But our work is not done. The difference between good and great is always. And always is the product of commitment, mastery, and personal accountability – which is what we will continue to focus on in FY24 and beyond. Why? Because our patients and our team deserve nothing less than the best we can give, ALWAYS! 

 

We have built a strong foundation with growing momentum for continued success in FY24, and I have no doubt we’re going to knock it out of the park! Thank you for embracing our bold vision to Get Healthcare Right eight years ago and caring to make a difference in the health of our community – every day, in every way – as One Team, TriHealth Strong!